Russian President Vladimir Putin has spent more than $50 billion on the Winter Games in Sochi, making this the most expensive Olympics in history. In the lead-up to the games, Russia has faced worldwide criticism and calls for boycotts, especially after it passed a law in June banning the spread of so-called “gay propaganda” to children. With the games just two days away, we host a roundtable with four guests: Dave Zirin, sports columnist for The Nation magazine and author of “Game Over: How Politics Has Turned the Sports World Upside Down”; Samantha Retrosi, a luge athlete who competed in the 2006 Winter Olympics; historian and former U.S. Olympic soccer player, Jules Boykoff, who is author of “Celebration Capitalism and the Olympic Games“; and Helen Lenskyj, author of several books on the Olympics, including “Gender Politics and the Olympic Industry” and the forthcoming book, “Sexual Diversity and the Sochi 2014 Olympics: No More Rainbows.”

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

DAVE ZIRIN: Second, I had a flashback this morning to getting a call from Amy in 2010, when she was detained at the Canadian border, going across for a different event, and the Vancouver Olympics were happening. Do you remember that?

AMY GOODMAN: Yes, I do.

DAVE ZIRIN: And they said to Amy, they said, “Are you here to talk about the Olympics?” And Amy said, “I am now.” And it’s just to point out that these issues we’re talking about are at every Olympics, and there’s no doubt that they’re getting amplified in Russia, partially because of the conflicts between the United States and Russia, but it’s also true that what’s happening in Russia is particularly bad, even by Olympic standards.

And that leads, really, to your question. I mean, the U.S. delegation involves three openly LGBT athletes—Billie Jean King, Caitlin Cahow, Brian Boitano—and then gold medalist Bonnie Blair. Now, what’s so interesting about this is that this is the first time since 2000 that nobody from the president or the vice president’s family has been part of the delegation. This is very clearly a thumb in the eye to Vladimir Putin by President Barack Obama. And I’m sure there a lot of people in the LGBT community and amongst allies who are happy that this is happening. It’s a strong stance for LGBT rights.

But I think people should also be very wary of it, for two reasons. First of all, we have a lot of problems in this country with regards to LGBT rights. I mean, for example, there are 29 states in this country you can still fire someone on the basis of their sexuality, and in eight states in this country there are what are called “no promo homo” laws, which are very similar to the Russian laws, where you cannot propagate homosexuality or anything of the sort. So, that’s the first thing. So it’s like we have to clean our own house.

The second thing, which is really important, is the only question that matters is: Will LGBT athletes in Russia be better or worse off after the cameras have gone home? And by sending over the delegation, one of the things that does is that it allows the IOC—and, by the way, they’re already doing this—and Putin to present the LGBT movement in Russia as a tool of the United States, and it actually opens them up for further repression.

BILLIE JEAN KING: It bans—they’re not supposed to protest or demonstrate. And if they do, they can have their medals stripped, and they can be sent home. But I also think people—some of the athletes will probably have their say.

SOCHI, Russia — In the shadows of an elevated highway, inside an out-of-the-way park, a hardy band of local Communist Party members staged the first formal protest of the Sochi Olympics.

Miss it? That’s not surprising. About 12 kilometers (seven miles) from the nearest Olympic venue, a handful of curious onlookers, a few mothers pushing young children in carriages, two TV cameras and a sprinkling of uniformed and plain-clothed police were there to witness Igor Vasiliev, leader of Sochi Communist Party Branch, and six supporters stage a peaceful rally on Saturday.

Under the guidelines, all demonstrations and rallies must be staged in the designated zone — at the “50 Years of Victory in the Great Patriotic War Park” in the coastal neighborhood of Khosta — and must be pre-approved.

Vasiliev said he applied for his permit on Jan. 27 and was given approval to stage a rally on Saturday, six days before the opening ceremony.

The group, wearing red scarves and holding placards, wanted to raise awareness of the plight of the so-called Children of the War — Russians born between 1928-45 — and their campaign for public financial aid.

Not even Vasiliev thinks the designated protest zone will get much use — it is bounded by a river on one side, a railway on another, is nestled under the new main Sochi highway, and is accessed by a pedestrian pathway near the end of a dead-end street.

To say it’s tucked away would be an understatement. Some of the local residents have confused the location, with some asking the manager of a nearby children’s amusement park if that is the designated demonstration zone.

“I think this is the wrong place … it was chosen on purpose,” Vasiliev said. “I want to underline that the authorities have chosen this place specifically because it’s not a busy place — there are very few people. You can only guess what they were aiming at when they chose this place.”

Vasiliev plans to stage rallies at locations closer to the municipal government’s central office after the Olympics, to a “place where we can be heard and seen both by the local people and by the authorities — not here when we are seen only by the passing by trains.”

Kindergarten assistant Yelena Chulkovr was among those walking, by chance, through the designated zone at the time of Saturday’s rally. She said she’d welcome demonstrations by protest groups if they were “acceptably done.”

“Why not?” she said. “Everyone has the right to express your opinion.”

Asked why he persisted in staging a rally when he knew it would be so far out of the public eye, Vasiliev found a reason to go ahead.

“The venue is not much suitable,” he told a television interviewer, “but at least you’re listening to us.”

In the lead up to the Sochi Winter Olympics this week, lesbian Australian snowboarder Belle Brockhoff has spoken up about how “worried” her parents are for her safety due to anti-gay laws in the host country: here.

How the #Sochi2014 Olympics are turning into the security Olympics: here.

Several LGBT groups called for boycotting the 2014 Winter Olympic Games over Russia’s recent ban on the propaganda of homosexuality to minors. But if they indeed succeed in raining on the Olympic parade, will gays and lesbians in Russia be treated with greater tolerance? Oksana is joined by Boris Dittrich, a man behind the introduction of same-sex marriage in the Netherlands and advocacy director of Human Rights Watch’s LGBT program.

The Sochi Olympics, which begin on February 6, take place in an atmosphere of escalating geopolitical tensions. The US government and the Western media are working to turn the event into a humiliation for the Russian government, amid growing conflicts between Washington and Moscow in the Middle East and Eastern Europe.

Athletes from hundreds of countries and tens of thousands of spectators will arrive in the Russian resort town to find an armed camp. Forty thousand security officers will patrol the so-called “ring of steel” set up by the Kremlin around the venue. They will be backed up by an air defense system, gunboats in the Black Sea, and 70,000 troops stationed along Russia’s nearby southern border with Georgia.

Four hundred Cossacks, the recently-resuscitated tsarist-era imperial gendarmes notorious for their savage violence, have been brought in and charged with checking identification and rounding up suspects.

Restrictions on demonstrations, protests, and public gatherings have been in place since early January, as well as controls over vehicle movement in, out, and around the Olympic zone.

Since the collapse of the USSR, Moscow has waged repeated wars and bloody counterinsurgency operations in the North Caucasus, the region neighboring Sochi, to crush Islamist separatist movements. Islamist jihadist groups have proclaimed Sochi a target.

Last week, a group called Vilayat Dagestan, which claimed responsibility for a December 2013 bombing in Volgograd, Russia that killed 34 people, issued a statement warning that Russians will “not see a quiet life.” They promised to deliver a “present” to tourists attending the games. In recent days, five European countries also allegedly received threatening letters.

Washington and its Saudi allies bear central responsibility for the risk of terrorist atrocities at the Sochi games. Jihadists from Chechnya and Dagestan are currently fighting alongside other US-backed Islamist extremists in Syria, where they are receiving critical training and funding.

Washington has long backed Islamist groups in the strategic North Caucasus region of Russia as part of its rivalry with Moscow in Central Asia. It has pursued this policy despite instances of terrorist “blowback” such as last year’s Boston Marathon bombings by two youths who had ties to Caucasus Islamist groups and whose uncle, Ruslan Tsarni, had ties to US intelligence.

often called ‘Bandar Bush‘ because of his links to the Bush dynasty in the USA

—the spy chief of Saudi Arabia, which supports Islamist groups in the North Caucasus—warned the Russian leader that Saudi Arabia would only guarantee the safety of the Olympic Games if Moscow dropped its support for the Assad regime in Syria.

Thus Washington Post columnist Sally Jenkins writes, “The Olympics aren’t supposed to kill people. They’re supposed to exalt them. But it’s too late to take the dangerous, despoiling Winter Games away from the thugocracy that is Vladimir Putin’s Russian regime.”

The atmosphere of political provocation around the Sochi Olympics found expression in comments by the speaker of the US House of Representatives, John Boehner. On the Jay Leno Show, Boehner bluntly denounced Russian President Vladimir Putin as a “thug” and demanded that Obama adopt more confrontational policies against Moscow to “better protect America’s interests and our allies, especially in Eastern Europe.”

American athletes have been told not to wear any identifying clothing outside of game venues. There are widespread English-language reports on Moscow’s search for “black widows”—female suicide bombers—dispatched to Sochi.

The US State Department continues to issue updated alerts to US citizens traveling to the region. In a move apparently made without first securing the agreement of the Russian government, the US Navy dispatched two warships to the Black Sea, purportedly to rescue US citizens in the event of an emergency.

On Friday, the Canadian government advised its citizens to rethink their plans to attend.

The Kremlin, which intended for the games to symbolize Russia’s resurgence as a world power, has responded by rejecting criticisms of its handling of the terror threat. Last week, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev insisted to CNN that the danger to the Sochi Olympics is no greater than that which faced previous games.

The media campaign being whipped up around the security of the Olympic Games is part of an ongoing effort by the US and allied governments to sabotage the games and eliminate whatever prestige Russia might have obtained by hosting them.

Last year, the White House used reactionary laws recently passed in Russia that stigmatize gays and ban the promotion of homosexuality to encourage a torrent of “human rights” criticism of Moscow. Such criticisms, given the right-wing character of the Islamist forces Washington itself is backing in the region, are deeply hypocritical.

In December, President Obama named openly gay representatives to the US Olympic delegation in an effort to further promote the issue.

The US is allied with the European powers, in particular Germany, in cynically manipulating the issue of homosexual rights at the games. Germany’s athletes will wear rainbow-colored uniforms, evoking a widely recognized symbol of the gay pride movement.

While the US has rejected calls for an official boycott of the event, the US president, first lady, and the vice president all declined to attend the games—the first time since 2000 that this has happened.

In December, the president of Germany, a country which is actively promoting an anti-Russian opposition movement in Ukraine that threatens to split the country in half, said he would not attend the Olympics in order to protest Russia’s human rights abuses and “air of imperialism.”

The immense cost of the Sochi Olympics, now exceeding $50 billion—more than four times the original estimate and the most expensive in Olympic history—is also being cited in the ongoing media campaign. According to Kremlin critics, as much as $30 billion of that sum was embezzled by well-connected government insiders.

It would hardly be surprising, given the deep corruption of the parasitic ruling elite that emerged from the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union, that it could have used the Olympics as yet another opportunity to transfer huge amounts of state wealth to the super-rich.

In this respect, however, the Sochi Olympics differs from other games only in terms of the scale of the graft. Responding to the allegations of corruption in May, Jean-Claude Killy, head of the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) commission for the Sochi games, observed: “I don’t recall an Olympics without corruption.”

Scandals have mired the games for decades, with bribery being a feature of every event, as cities vie to serve as hosts so that business interests in their regions can win massive, lucrative contracts.

Investigations into the 1996 games in Atlanta and the Salt Lake City games in 2002 both turned up evidence of widespread corruption on the part of both the host cities and the IOC.

This video, recorded during the 2006 Winter Olympics in Italy, says about itself:

Dutch party band named “Small beer” [Kleintje Pils] is performing in Turin during the Olympic Games. In this case with the 10000m speed skating, a traditional Dutch part of the Winter Olympics. As you can see, the atmosphere is fantastic.

From Associated Press:

Dutch brass band may play ‘YMCA’ at Sochi oval

By RAF CASERT and MIKE CORDER

Jan. 21, 2014 12:22 PM EST

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — The Dutch brass band that always performs at Olympic speed skating ovals is considering playing a popular gay song — “Y.M.C.A.” — at the Sochi Winter Olympics to show its support for gay rights.

This is called Village People – YMCA OFFICIAL Music Video 1978.

It remains to be seen how Russian and Olympic authorities would react should the Kleintje Pils band play a song widely considered to be a gay anthem. A ban on information about “nontraditional sexual relations” signed into law by Russian President Vladimir Putin has provoked widespread international outrage from critics who believe it discriminates against gays.

Band leader Ruud Bakker told The Associated Press on Tuesday that Kleintje Pils could mix the Village People’s “Y.M.C.A.” in its sing-along repertoire as “a signal.” But he added that the band didn’t want to antagonize organizers or turn its performances into a “political game.”

“We will see if we can get one or two songs into the selection, knowing that in the Netherlands it will be seen as a signal we are thinking of them (gays),” Bakker said.

The band, which keeps speed skating crowds rocking during ice resurfacing breaks at Olympic competitions, is best known for its stirring rendition of Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” and Queen’s “We are the Champions.” Usually they get the thousands of fans of all nationalities to dance along as they walk around the big oval with the permission of organizers. Mixing in a political message would be a new move.

The band performed “Y.M.C.A.” at the 2002 Salt Lake City games but has not played it since then. It has also practiced some Russian songs for the Sochi Olympics, which run Feb. 7-23.

This is a music video of the Russian song Kalinka. Dutch brass bands have played this song before at speed skating events.

Indirect moves by athletes to show support for gays have already caused controversy in Russia. At last August’s world athletics championships in Moscow, Swedish high jumper Emma Green Tregaro sported rainbow colors on her nails. In the final, however, Green Tregaro went with red nails after track officials said her earlier gesture might violate the meet’s code of conduct.

Ms Green Tegaro was very lucky that Avery Brundage from the USA was not sports boss any more. Brundage would surely have punished her, not only for ‘gay’ rainbow fingernails, but for ‘communist’ red fingernails as well …

Reminding me a bit about when Turkish far Right nationalists complained that a Turkish workers’ organisation met in a building with red bricks, so was supposedly “communist” … err … what is the colour of the Turkish flag again? Reminding me again of the lyrics of Bob Dylan’s John Birch Paranoid Blues):

Avery Brundage did not mind nazi salutes during the infamous 1936 Berlin Olympics. But he did mind Black Power salutes, by athletes protesting against discrimination, very much, and had those athletes punished.

Sports officials like Avery Brundage in the USA were very much against athletes or spectators protesting against anti-Semitism, concentration camps, or other atrocities of Hitler’s Third Reich. Such protests, they said, would be “political”. And Olympics, and sports in general, should be “non-political”. Meanwhile, there were nazi swastikas everywhere at Olympic venues. Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl made the official Olympic movie. Not only German athletes and sports bureaucrats, also many foreign athletes and sports bureaucrats did nazi salutes. All that was not political in the mindset of Avery Brundage and his ilk.

Their stand in support of civil rights and against racism reverberated internationally.

The photograph of their protest has become one of the most recognised images in the world, after that of the first moon landing.

The unexpected silver medalist, 26-year-old Australian Peter Norman, wore a button of the “Olympic Project for Human Rights”—a civil rights protest movement set up by black athlete Harry Edwards before the Games—in support of his two fellow athletes.

These three athletes were punished harshly for daring to be ‘political’. While Avery Brundage, of 1936 Hitler Olympics infamy, was still Olympics big boss. Not political at all [sarcasm off].

Concerns have grown over TEPCO’s handling of radioactive water at Fukushima since the August leak was discovered, with Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe last month ordering the operator to set a timeline to fix the leaks.

Six workers at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant have been exposed to radioactive water. The incident happened after one of them mistakenly removed a pipe connected to a water treatment system at the facility. Several tonnes of contaminated water was released, some of which doused the employees: here.

Only days ago the Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe assured the world that the Fukushima nuclear power plant would not pose a threat to staging the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo. But according to the man charged with ensuring the safety of the clean-up at the damaged plant, the situation is not under control. Al Jazeera’s Dominic Kane reports.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe campaigned on the basis of making Japan “a strong nation” with “a strong military,” including the revision of the country’s so-called pacifist constitution to allow Tokyo to once again use the military to advance Japan’s imperialist interests. The latest request for a higher defence budget comes on top of an increase in military spending earlier this year.

The focus of the spending increases is to boost air and naval capacities, as Japan is locked in a dispute with China over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea. “In order to respond effectively to attacks on islands, it is indispensable to securely maintain superiority in the air as well as on the sea,” the defence ministry’s release stated.

Defence minister Itsunori Onodera declared that Japan could not afford to be complacent over “significant security issues in the region” and had to counter a “more assertive Chinese military amid territorial disputes.” Finance Minister Taro Aso also stated in a recent speech that higher military spending would be “a clear signal of our determination to defend the Senkaku Islands.”

Already, the Abe government has dangerously escalated the physical confrontation with China over the disputed islets. The latest incidents involved scrambling fighters against Chinese bombers and a drone that appeared in the vicinity around September 11, the anniversary of Japan’s provocative “nationalisation” of the islands in 2012. Last week, Abe’s cabinet went further, threatening to shoot down any Chinese drone that entered Japanese airspace.

The guidelines for the expanded military budget were outlined in the National Defence Program Guidelines interim report released in July. It recommended that the military develop “preemptive strike capability.” This “preemptive” capacity was justified in the name of “self-defence”—in an effort not to openly breach the constitution’s “pacifist clause.”

Part of the increased spending is to study acquiring unmanned drones and tilt-rotor aircraft, with actual purchases planned for the following year. In other words, the defence budget will continue to grow in the coming years.

The Japanese military is particularly interested in American-made vertical takeoff, tilt-rotor MV-22 Osprey transport planes to provide for the rapid forward deployment of troops, including to remote islands. The defence ministry is planning to acquire an undisclosed number of these aircraft at 10 billion yen ($US101 million) apiece.

During an 18-day joint drill with the US to improve the Japanese military’s amphibious capabilities, an Osprey landed on a Japanese navy ship in June. Next month, the US Marine Corps will use the Osprey, 23 of which are deployed in Okinawa, in joint exercises in western and southern Japan.

Japan launched the first of two 27,000-tonne helicopter carriers, Izumo, last month. Although officially a “helicopter destroyer,” it is larger than the aircraft carriers of the Italian and Indian navies and can base vertical takeoff aircraft such as the Osprey.

None of the expanded spending has included the ordering of 42 F-35A stealth fighters from the US at a total cost of $10 billion, to ensure that Japan possesses air superiority over the fighters used by China or Russia. The Japanese government is also considering buying Global Hawk unmanned drones to strengthen maritime surveillance.

The government is further boosting the Japanese Coast Guard, which is not part of the defence ministry, in order to step up patrols around the Senkakus. A request for a 13 percent increase in funding to 196.3 billion yen has been made for the next fiscal year in order to build new patrol ships and boost the staff by 528 people—the largest expansion in decades.

As part of its military build-up in Asia against China, the Obama administration has encouraged Japan to take a more aggressive stance toward Beijing and assume “greater responsibility” in the US-Japan alliance. All Japan’s military purchases complement the Pentagon’s “Air/Sea Battle” doctrine for war against China, which includes devastating air attacks on the Chinese mainland, as well as a naval blockade of vital shipping lanes. Japan already provides $2 billion annually to finance the dozens of US bases in the country, including the Seventh Fleet based in Yokosuka.

Like Washington, the Abe government views a strong military as a means for offsetting the country’s economic decline. China overtook Japan as the world’s second largest economy in 2010, and this had definite strategic implications. In 1995, Japan’s military spending was seven times higher than that of China. Now China’s is 2.5 times that of Japan.

Tokyo’s higher military spending will mean further inroads into the living standards of the working class, which will be forced to foot the bill. Public debt surpassed 1 quadrillion yen at the end of June for the first time, or $US10.46 trillion—the result of two decades of stagnation and failed stimulus spending. The debt level is more than twice Japan’s gross domestic product (GDP).

Abe is seeking to double the country’s regressive sales tax to 10 percent over the next two years, and impose welfare cuts of 6.5 percent over the next three years. At the same time, the Bank of Japan is pumping money into the coffers of the banks and financial institutions to the tune of 70 trillion yen ($700 billion) annually. The resulting devaluation of the yen has boosted exports, but is also raising trade tensions, particularly with South Korea and China.

The government’s austerity measures and remilitarisation will provoke public opposition. The decision by Abe’s mentor—former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi—to dispatch troops in 2004 to boost the US occupation of Iraq provoked mass anti-war protests. Abe’s ambition to build Japan’s military might well lead to a much broader confrontation with the working class.